pradal serey

[tenzen]

last night i met kru lo. he is one ofour instructors who has been in california. he is short and very muscular. we did alot of sparring drills and when i was working with him i could feel his shins through my shin pads when we were checking. he was very powerful he had me doing alot of check and strike drills. i think this is because he wants me to be more of a counter fighter since i am short and he is too. maybeit is better for short people to fight this way. my style is very straight on in your face type of style, kind of like i just maul my opponent. kru said this is not good because i cannot get in on everybody someone will be able to stop me eventually and that person will be a counter fighter who will wait for me to try to maul him. i can see this as a likely possibility. but i like to keep the pressure on and smother the opponent so he cant think and i can break them down with my punches and elbows. i feel like those are my strongest most effective weapons, since i am short kicks are not really a big advantage to me, i mean i use them and have powerful kicks. but i am a heavyweight, i weigh 205, and alot of the heavyweights are taller than i am by alot. his kids were there too and let me tell ya they are hardcore. he told us that they hit sandbags everyday not regular heavy bags. the same kind you use to stop flooding. they are no older than 8 maybe and they sparred harder than some of the adults. i thought itwas pretty cool to watch.

i have seen alot of mike zambiddis fights. he is a fighter close to what i would be, short and powerful. he has a great highlight reel where he is shown knocking out a few big guys.

[Tee Sok]

One thing you may want to try is spar with different opponents, taller, faster, more powerful.......so you can have different ranges/speed/power alongside the different style each individual has, and see what strategy you can adopt in each case, see what works. Just my thoughts based on my short experience sparring and watching my friends spar.

[tenzen]

i have sparred with everyone in my gym as of right now they are all different and all very talented. only the krus pose a real challenge to me, well and my friend who is doing it with me but the only thing he has is reach. the smaller guys are very fast though. but my body shots stop them in their tracks though. i am not saying they are less of fighters than i am just different. i tend to just run them over while they try to think of what they are going to do or how to handle me. but like i said they are all very good some of which are undefeated in the ring with quite a few fights under their belts. i hope i do as good as they do. it is different when it is sparring with the class and fighting someone else

[george stando]

Sounds good, keep it up, it all reveals itself through the steadiness of training.

[tenzen]

thanks for the input guys. i really appreciate it.

[tenzen]

hello everyone just doing my normal post to keep you updated about whats going on in my khmer boxing.
yesterday i sparred for about 4 hours. some matches my kru put a handicap on me. like one match i could only kick one i could only punch, one i could only defend etc. the last match was a full 5 round bout against a guy who has just gotten back from 3 months in cambodia. he was a good match for me. although i found some holes in his defense and landed some good shots he would not quit. they train pretty tough over there i guess, cuz he took some great shots. his hands where pretty good, but his kicks i felt like were weak and he could not use them to effectively keep me away. this might have been his plan to let me come in on him, but he had not sparred me before or seen me spar so he did not know that that is my game. i like to come in very fast and hard to take away their plan and so far it has worked.
last night i found out that one of my krus lives relatively close to me, i didnt know it but only a half a mile away. i found out after class when i was already at home and about to go to sleep. he called me and said "hey you know you live close to me right. well thats alot of travel everyday for your classes. how would you like to come train with me at my house? i only live around the corner." i happily accepted.
the trip to class is 45 minutes there and 45 back. i drive an expidition. this can get very expensive. so three out of 6 days a week that i train will be private instruction from my kru the rest will be regular class. i love this stuff.